Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters

To all appearances, Ken Kesey had a considerable share in the
invention of what has since come to be known as the counterculture of the 1960s. He
authored the sensational best-selling novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
 his literary debut, published in 1962, before he turned twenty-seven. In July 1964,
then, at his home in La Honda (just south of San Francisco), Ken Kesey and a group of
friends, relatives and devotees embarked a battered 1939 International Harvester school
bus, to go on a cross-country ride to New York. Boldly named FURTHUR (fusing
"further" and "future"), the bus was especially prepared for the
occasion. The seats were replaced by couches, many-colored iridescent day-glo sprays were
applied liberally to enhance the coating, and an intricate sound and film equipment was
installed, not merely for entertainment, but to document the outing. Enormous footage on
celluloid and audio tape was produced along the way (much of which still awaits
examination in the Prankster Archives).

The Pranksters' journey on the bus turned into a trip
 whose general direction was suggested by the Pranksters' desire to visit,
along the way, Timothy Leary and to get attuned, on the road, to the prospective meeting
with the prophet of LSD. The patriarch of the communal outing, Kesey had first come across
LSD when as a graduate student at Stanford he wanted to earn some extra money on the side
(he was married and the father of a boy, with another child on the way). He volunteered at
Menlo Park VA Hospital in a government-sponsored program, participating in experiments
conducted to study the effects of hallucinogenics. The experiences gained with "the
best LSD he ever had . . ., sponsored by the government" (so he has liked to claim),
were vital in the conception of Cuckoo's Nest.

The driver seat of the Prankster bus was occupied mainly by Neal
Cassady, who had inspired Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957) and Visions of
Cody (1959).

His autobiographical The First Third underlined that Cassady
indeed was Dean Moriarty, the protagonist of Kerouac's cult novel, and Cody
Pomeroy, of the sprawling documentary.  By the time FURTHUR had made it to New York,
however, it had become sufficiently clear that, driven by Cassady, Kesey and his Merry
Pranksters had left the Beats far behind. Significantly, in New York they encountered,
among others, Jack Kerouac, who was completely put off by the Pranksters' appearance and
habitus; in particular, the ardent patriot (Kerouac in his youth in Lowell, Massachusetts,
had spoken the French Canadian dialect his parents had used at home) resented the
Pranksters' abuse of the flag; and Kesey, the "Chief," liked to pose as Captain
Flag. The Further Inquiry, cast as a screenplay and enhanced ostentatiously by
graphics, is a latter-day reassessment of Cassady's part in the undertaling. More balanced
is the recollection offered in Ken Babbs's and Paul Perry's On The Bus: The Complete
Guide to the Legendary Trip of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and the Birth of the
Counterculture.

The book cover of Ken Kesey's 1990
recapitulation (of sorts) of those wild days on the bus back in '64, '65Kesey and the bus at his farm near Springfield, Oregon (in the 1990s)Kesey's favorite pose these days, taking after Faulkner'sKen Kesey (right) and his perennial Prankster lieutenant Ken BabbsKen Babbs's and Paul Perry's account of Prankster extravaganza